Druses

Druses, a remarkable people who inhabit a district in the north of Syria, comprising the whole of the southern range of Mount Lebanon and the western slope of Anti-Lebanon. Nearly half the Druse nation inhabit the Jebel Druse, a mountainous district to the south-west of Damascus, where they maintain a quasi-independence, refusing either conscription or taxation to the Turkish government. Those in the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon are subjects to the Règlement du Liban, which releases them from conscription, and provides a settled annual payment from that section of the nation which collects its own taxes. Sixteen villages are in northern Galilee; and do not enjoy any of the privileges of the other two sections, but are more oppressed than either Moslems or Christians. According to their own tradition, they were Arab tribes from Yemen who migrated to Mesopotamia, thence to the neighbourhood of Aleppo, where Darazi found them, from whence they came south. Another tradition connects them with China. A third theory traces their origin to the Cuthites (Karduchi or Kurds), with whom, after the second captivity of Israel, Esarhaddon re-peopled the wasted strongholds of Samaria. More than a thousand years later, the

Mardi, a warlike tribe of Persian extraction, were transplanted thither by Constantine IV., in 686 A.D., to the number of 12,000, to act as a bulwark against Mohammedan invasion. The Arabs also, in sweeping through the mountain-fastnesses, left a permanent impression there. Thus, according to this view, Cuthites, Mardi, and Arabs, or rather Mohammedans of various races, combined to form that strange being—the modern Druse.

The nationality of these mountaineers having been consolidated, their peculiar and mysterious religion began gradually to be developed. Hakim Biamr Allah, or Biamrillah, one of the Fatimite califs of Egypt, and a Nero in cruelty, was the author of this system. He affirmed that he was the representative of God, and, having enlisted his confessor, Darazi, in his cause, he prepared to propound his doctrine. In the 407th year of the Hegira (1029 A.D.), the divine nature of Hakim, or rather the incarnation of the Spirit of God in him, was publicly announced at Cairo. This revelation, however, was unfavourably received by the mob. Hakim's confessor, Darazi, narrowly escaped the fate of a martyr to the impostures of his master. Retiring, however, he established himself on the western slopes of Hermon near Hasbeya, and there began to inculcate the principles of the new faith; and although he never acquired any mastery over the sympathies of the mountaineers, he at least in all probability left his name to them. Hamzé, a Persian mystic, and successively the disciple and vizier of Hakim, introduced into the newly promulgated religion all the elements of attraction and strength which it possesses; and him the Druses venerate as the actual founder of their faith.

The Druses form one of the very few sects among whom proselytism is discouraged. They are remarkable conservatives. For 800 years they have maintained a distinct religious and political independence and nationality. Into their faith the doctrines of the Pentateuch, the Christian gospel, the Koran, and the Sufi allegories are wonderfully interwoven. The following are their seven great principles: (1) Veracity (to each other only); (2) mutual protection and resistance; (3) renunciation of all other religions; (4) separation from all who are in error; (5) recognition of the unity of God; (6) resignation to his will; (7) obedience to the commands of God. They believe in one God in whom there are no parts, to whom they ascribe no attributes, before whom the tongue ceases to utter, the eyes to behold, but who has revealed himself ten times upon the earth under the form and name of mortal men. In Hakim, so Hamzé taught, had God revealed himself for the tenth and last time; there have been sixty-nine minor manifestations. They also believe that the number of existing souls never varies, and that all the souls in life now have lived, vested in some human form, from the beginning of the world, and will so continue to exist till the end of it; that when a man dies, his soul puts on a fresh humanity, which occupies a rank in moral dignity corresponding to the purity or impurity of the past life. When the soul has been purified from every stain, there will come a period of rest. Prayer is looked upon as an interference with the work of the Creator. The resurrection will be ushered in by war between the Mohammedans and Christians, and the Druses only wait for an Armageddon in which they believe they are destined to take a prominent part. As a religious body, the Druses are divided into two classes; the Ákals, or those initiated into the Druse mysteries; and the Djahils, the uninitiated. The former do not adorn themselves with gold, or wear silk, or embroidered garments; they forbear using wine, spirits, tobacco, and other luxuries. Yet the Akal is taught that when necessary, equivocation, or even falsehood, may be practised.

The most remarkable man produced by the Druses in the beginning of the 17th century has been the Emir Fakr-ed-din, who annexed Beyront and Sidon, and threatened Damascus, and who was executed by the Turks. When Emir Beshir was chosen sheikh of the Druses in 1789, the authority of the Porte was only nominal in the Lebanon; by the help of Egypt he subdued his rival sheikh Beshir. The Turks instigated the Druses to revolt against Egypt, and the final struggle between the Turks and Egyptians culminated in the defeat of the latter, owing to the assistance rendered to the Sultan by England, and Emir Beshir was exiled to Malta. After this, the Maronite Christians and the Druses took to murdering each other, and the strife reached its climax in 1860. From May to October of that year, accounts of the fearful barbarities practised by the Druses upon the Maronites followed each other with appalling frequency, until the indignation of Europe was roused against them. A conference of the five Powers which had guaranteed the independence of Turkey met at Paris, and it was resolved that a force of 20,000 men, one-half of which were French, should proceed to Syria to chastise the Druses, and that a European Commission should, on the spot, make inquiry as to the facts. The troops reached Syria in August 1860. They could not, however, get at the Druses, who retired into the Desert of the Hauran. It was ascertained beyond all doubt that the Turks and the low fanatical mob of Damascus were mainly chargeable with the crimes that had been committed; and that the retaliations of the Maronites were equally vindictive and horrible. Punishment was inflicted on those who were most to blame. In June 1861 the troops returned to France, and the commissioners drew up a new constitution for the Lebanon (1864), under which it was to be ruled by a Christian governor, appointed by the Porte; and to be divided into seven districts, under chiefs of the prevalent religion in each. The result was the appointment as governor of Daoud Pasha, under whom and Rustem Pasha (1880) disturbing elements have been kept in check. The Druses are estimated at 70,000 in number, the population of the Lebanon at 13,000, that of the Hauran about 50,000. In feeling they are friendly to England, and some have learned a little English. English missionaries have laboured amongst them. They are a brave, handsome, and industrious people, can almost all read and write, and have many characteristics in common with the Scottish Highlanders. They abstain from excesses, never taste wine or tobacco, polygamy is unknown, the women are virtuous, and divorces are uncommon though simple enough, consisting in the husband telling his wife three times that she had better go back to her mother. They had no superior educational establishment until Daoud Pasha founded and endowed one at Aby. They have, with incredible toil, carried the soil of the valleys up and along the hillsides, which are laid out in terraces, planted with mulberry, olive, and vine. Their chief trade is the manufacture of silk, chiefly at Shimlan, 3000 feet above sea-level; the manufacture employs about 6000 hands. Corn is also raised, though in very small quantity. Deir-el-kamar (q.v.) is the principal town, but of late, Bakhlin, 6 miles distant, has been the Druse headquarters. Kunawat is the chief town of the Druses of the Hauran. See the Earl of Carnarvon's Druses of the Lebanon (1860); De Sacy's Exposé de la Religion des Druses (1828); Churchill's Ten Years' Residence in Mount Lebanon (3 vols. 1853), and Druses and Maronites (1862); Laurence Olliphant's Land of Gilead (1880), and Haifa (1887).